Music, media, marketing & misc.

Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah (From The West Wing)

Last night was the finale of the X Factor and the song that the winner, Alexandra Burke, will be releasing this year is a cover version of Halleljuah by Jeff Buckley. Now I realise that Buckley’s version is actually a cover of the original by Leonard Cohen but, just as Aretha Franklin did with Respect, or Jimi Hendrix did with All Along The Watchtower, Buckley’s cover has now become the standard version.

Well, as the version by Alexandra is undoubtedly going to be a horrible sugar-coated effort (though there’s no doubting the fact that the girl has one hell of a voice) I thought it might be good to plug the Buckley version, and encourage everyone to buy his instead of hers: I’ve chosen this scene from The West Wing as I’ve nearly watched the entire 7 seasons after getting the box-set for my birthday, and this scene brought a tear to my eye when I watched it a few weeks back.

There’s actually a Facebook campaign to push Buckley’s version to the Christmas Number 1 and keep Burke’s off of the top-spot (26,000 members & counting), so if you are going to buy it don’t do it till tomorrow so that it counts towards the Christmas charts. That way maybe Top of the Pops on Christmas Day will have a video of a song released by a man who died after going swimming with his boots on (no-one said that musical talent had to be allied with basic common sense) instead of something that will probably make you want to throw yourself into a river.

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Richey Edwards’ disappeared on 01 Feb 1995 and is now officially presumed dead (drowning being a possible cause). Considering Rednex ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ was #1 in the UK charts at the time, your assumption that people could ‘take to the water’ on heading Alexandra’s ‘Hallelujah’ cover isn’t actually that far from reality.

Had Richey hung around for another week, he’d have only been subjected to Celine Dion’s ‘Think Twice’ anyway. That certainly would have been worse that death…